The US Department of Justice's complaint seeking the recovery of assets related to the Malaysian sovereign wealth fund, 1MDB, is compelling reading. In a 136-page filing, a remarkable web of money transfers and illicit purchases is exposed. Several banks are involved in it and three more have since been rebuked by the Monetary Authority of Singapore for failing to implement proper money laundering checks.

So who comes out of it in the best and worst shape? Here is a quick guide:

• Goldman Sachs. Mentioned extensively in the document, but that is no surprise, and the complaint does not tell us anything we did not already know. It confirms Goldman's eye-watering fees and commissions. Of the $1.75 billion raised through bonds in May 2012, known internally as Project Magnolia, Goldman took $192.5 million, equating to 11% of the principal; and of the $1.75 billion it raised in October that year, known as Project Maximus, Goldman appears to have taken $113.74 million. Goldman is further embarrassed by the publication of emails between employees and a 1MDB officer: among them the odd revelation that Jho Low, a Malaysian national who advised on the creation of TIA, 1MDB's predecessor, and one of the central figures of the scandal, addressed his Goldman contact – believed to be Tim Leissner, the former southeast Asia chairman, who left the bank in February – as ‘bro'. Crucially, however, Goldman is not accused of any wrong-doing in the complaint. It is alleged that, among other things, $577 million of the first bond deal was diverted to a Swiss bank account, which had nothing to do with 1MDB's supposed purpose, but it is not alleged that Goldman knew that was going to happen. Nevertheless, Goldman's problems are not over, as it is being investigated separately by the DoJ about whether it violated the Bank Secrecy Act in its work for 1MDB in 2012 and 2013.

• AmBank. Of all Malaysian banks, this is by far the most closely linked to the scandal, since it was at AmBank that the person referred to as “Malaysian Official 1” – understood to be prime minister Najib Razak – held his accounts. The complaint says that between March 21 and 25, 2013, $681 million was sent to one of these accounts, which had earlier received $50 million of other payments from accounts linked to diverted bond proceeds. Using a different AmBank account, just over $620 million was then sent back again in the other direction in August that year. These are the sums that the Malaysian attorney general notoriously described as a personal donation from the Saudi royal family, concluding that there was no case for Najib to answer. AmBank was also the originating bank for a number of transfers in 2011 from 1MDB to an account known as Good Star, which was beneficially owned by Jho Low and which the DoJ allege was used to launder more than $400 million of funds into the US: “after which these funds were used for the personal gratification of Low and his associates.”

• DBS, Standard Chartered and UBS. Although none are mentioned in the DoJ complaint, a day after its release the Monetary Authority of Singapore announced its own findings into 1MDB-related fund flows through Singapore. It announced “instances of control failings” in all three banks and in some cases “weaknesses in the processes for accepting clients and monitoring transactions. There was also undue delay in detecting and reporting suspicious transactions.” The MAS says there were lapses in specific processes and by individual officers: “The lapses were serious in their own right, and will be met by firm regulatory actions against the banks.” All three banks say they notified MAS with concerns about fund flows, so the MAS's objection seems to be around the pace and detail with which these notifications happened and indeed that clients were accepted in the first place.

• BSI Bank was thrown out of Singapore in May by the MAS “in view of its serious breaches of AML requirements and poor management oversight, and gross misconduct by some of the bank's staff.”

• Falcon Private Bank's Singapore branch has also been under constant MAS scrutiny. The MAS's latest announcement speaks of “substantial breaches of AML regulations, including failure to adequately assess irregularities in activities pertaining to customers' accounts and to file suspicious transaction reports.” MAS says it is still examining information on Falcon from the bank's Switzerland head office.

• Deutsche Bank also makes a significant appearance in the DoJ complaint. Deutsche handled a $1 billion-equivalent foreign exchange transfer from 1MDB into the bank account of a joint venture between 1MDB and PetroSaudi, of which $700 million was eventually diverted to the Good Star account. However the complaint does not explicitly criticize Deutsche here, instead accusing 1MDB senior management of making “material misrepresentations and omissions to Deutsche Bank officials”. The complaint prints a lengthy transcript of a 2009 call between a Deutsche Bank employee, a Deutsche Bank supervisor and a 1MDB officer, and another with a Bank Negara official. The exchange shows Deutsche asking questions, albeit somewhat toothless ones, about where proceeds were going and apparently being lied to.

• RBS Coutts also appears in this section, since it held the Good Star account into which the funds were being sent. According to the complaint, RBS Coutts records show that Good Star Limited was formed in the Seychelles in 2009 and that Jho Low opened the Good Star account at an RBS Coutts branch in Singapore in June 2009. Deutsche also handled a 2011 $110 million transfer from 1MDB to Good Star.

• JPMorgan and Wells Fargo also appear. JP Morgan (Suisse) held an account related to the contentious 1MDB-PetroSaudi JV (although this one appears to have been legitimate), and JPMorgan Chase was the correspondent bank for Deutsche's and AmBank's wire transfers that ended up in the Good Star account. JPMorgan was also the correspondent bank for transfers of funds from the Good Star account to the accounts of a Saudi prince who co-founded PetroSaudi, from which they were then apparently transferred to Malaysian official 1. Saudi Arabia's Riyad Bank also enters the story here, as the Saudi prince in question had his account there. Wells Fargo was the correspondent bank on some transfers from the Good Star account to this prince, and is also linked to the purchase of a Bombardier aircraft using 1MDB funds. And Citibank is named as a correspondent bank which handled, among other things, funds that ended up in a BSI Bank account in Switzerland through which some of the bond proceeds from 2012 were alleged by the DoJ to have been diverted. One name that does not appear anywhere in the complaint is CIMB. Earlier this year Nazir Razak, the CIMB chairman and the brother of the prime minister, was linked to the scandal after he disbursed $7 million of funds to various politicians and political groups, apparently at the instruction of the prime minister, and believing them to have been legitimate campaign contributions. He stepped aside to allow himself to be investigated by his own board and by Ernst & Young and was exonerated by both. An interview with Nazir, including his views on the scandal, will appear in the September edition of Euromoney.

A Malaysian opposition party leader has called on Prime Minister Najib Razak to step down following the lawsuit filed by the US Justice Department to seize $1bn in assets linked to the country’s scandal-plagued 1MDB state investment fund.

The Justice Department said on Wednesday that the assets were “associated with an international conspiracy to launder funds misappropriated” from 1MDB, and included lavish real estate in Beverly Hills and New York, artwork by Monet and Van Gogh, and a business jet.

“I believe the Malaysian people want Dato’ Sri Najib to go on leave as prime minister so as not to create the perception of abuse of power or process to halt or hinder a full and transparent investigation on this very serious issue,” Wan Azizah Wan Ismail, president of the People’s Justice Party (PKR), said in a statement on Thursday.

Malaysia’s government should allow an independent commission investigate corruption claims outlined by the Justice Department, said Wan Azizah, who is the wife of jailed Malaysian opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim.

The lawsuit alleges a complex money laundering scheme that the Justice Department said was intended to enrich top-level officials of 1MDB.

In a press conference in Washington, DC, on Wednesday, US Attorney General Loretta Lynch said the 1MDB funds were used as a “personal bank account”.

The fund is owned by the Malaysian government, but none of the lawsuits named Prime Minister Najib Razak, who has consistently denied any wrongdoing.

However, the case named Riza Aziz, the prime minister’s step-son, as a “relevant individual” in the case.

Al Jazeera’s correspondent Sohail Rahman, speaking from Kuala Lumpur, said the prime minister’s office issued a statement overnight in response to the allegations.

As the prime minister holds the financial portfolio under which 1MDB operates, and many of his critics say he should have known what was going on “and many actually accuse him of being involved in this whole scenario,” Rahman said.

Ordinary Malaysians will likely be shocked by this US investigation, as the Malaysian government’s own probe of 1MDB has already ended, he said.

“The case in theory has been closed since October when the attorney general here in Malaysia said that there was no wrongdoing, and ordered the Malaysian anti-corruption commission to close the case.”

“However, this re-opens it from, certainly, across the Pacific, where the US now will go forward to try and investigate how these assets were bought,” Rahman said.

In the statement, the prime minister’s office said it would “fully cooperate with any lawful investigation of Malaysian companies or citizens, in accordance with international protocols, as the prime minister has always maintained, if any wrongdoing is proven, the law will be enforced without exception,” he added.

‘Money-laundering scheme’

The 1MDB fund was created in 2009 by the Malaysian government with the goal of promoting economic development projects in the Asian nation.

Instead, officials at the fund diverted more than $3.5bn over the next four years through a web of shell companies and bank accounts in Singapore, Switzerland, Luxembourg and the US, according to the justice department complaint.

Federal officials said more than $1bn was laundered into the US for the personal benefit of 1MDB officials and their associates.

The funds were used to pay for luxury real estate in the US and Europe; gambling expenses in Las Vegas casinos; a London interior designer; more than $200m artwork by artists, including Van Gogh and Monet; and for the production of films, including the 2013 Oscar-nominated movie “The Wolf of Wall Street”.

The complaint said that among those who profited from the scheme was the prime minister’s step-son Aziz, who co-founded Red Granite Pictures, a movie production studio whose films include “The Wolf of Wall Street”.

According to the complaint, 11 wire transfers totaling $64m were used to fund the studio’s operations, including the production of the movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio.

Leslie Caldwell, US assistant attorney general, said at the news conference on Wednesday that neither 1MDB nor the Malaysia people saw “a penny of profit from that film,” or the other assets that were purchased with fund siphoned from 1MDB.

Red Granite said on Wednesday that none of the funding it received four years ago was illegitimate and nothing the company or Riza did was wrong.

Authorities in neighbouring Singapore also announced on Thursday that they seized assets worth $240m in their own investigation of 1MDB-related fund for possible money laundering.

The Monetary Authority of Singapore, as well as the city state’s Attorney-General’s Chambers and the Commercial Affairs Department said their investigation of the funds found “deficiencies” at several major banks, including “undue delay in detecting and reporting suspicious transactions.”

Al Jazeera's correspondent in Washington DC Kimberly Halkett said the investigation is likely to strain US relations with Malaysia, which President Obama had personally tried to cultivate, having played a round of golf with Najib during a visit to the country in 2014.

The panel made the ruling after hearing submissions from Anwar’s lawyer, Latheefa Koya and counsel Amran Aminuddin who represented Wan Muhammad Azri.

On February 28, 2014, Anwar won his case at the High Court against Wan Muhammad Azri, who was ordered to pay the plaintiff RM800,000 in damages and RM50,000 in cost for linking him to a man in a sex video.

Anwar filed the suit against Wan Muhammad Azri on March 21 2013, seeking RM100 million in damages, alleging that the blogger had posted a series of four defamatory statements and images on his blog dated March 16, 17, 19 and 20, 2013. ? Bernama

Isnin, 18 Julai 2016

BY A ANANTHALAKSHMI AND SAEED AZHAR (BUSINESSDAY)

18 JULY 2016

SINGAPORE — Singapore's central bank was scrutinising several banks, including UBS and DBS Group Holdings, to see if they broke rules against money laundering in handling transactions linked to scandal-hit Malaysian state fund 1MDB, three people with knowledge of the matter said.

The Monetary Authority of Singapore was looking at several aspects of the banks' operations, sources said.

Switzerland's Falcon Private Bank and Coutts International, which is owned by Geneva-based Union Bancaire Privee, were also under review, they said.

Malaysian companies and banks linked to 1MDB are at the centre of corruption and money laundering probes that have led investigators to look at transactions and financial relationships across the globe — from Malaysia to Singapore and the Seychelles, from Abu Dhabi to offshore companies in the Caribbean, and from the US to Switzerland. A Malaysian parliamentary investigation found that $4.2bn of 1MDB's money was unaccounted for or went to overseas bank accounts whose owners could not be ascertained.

UBS, Coutts and DBS, which is Singapore's top lender, all declined to comment.

A Zurich-based spokesman for Falcon said: “We have transparently shared our view and have nothing to add.”

Falcon, owned by one of the world's leading sovereign wealth funds, Abu Dhabi's International Petroleum Investment Company, has previously said it was in contact with Singapore's central bank and was co-operating.

The Monetary Authority of Singapore was in talks with several banks and would make an announcement on any punitive action against them after the review was completed, sources said. The full details are not known at this stage.

“It is important for Singapore to be seen to be taking action against any abuse of its private banking sector for money laundering,” said Nizam Ismail, Singapore-based partner at RHTLaw Taylor Wessing, where he advises on financial services, regulation and compliance.

A spokeswoman for the authority referred Reuters to its statement in March, when it said that “as part of its investigations into possible money laundering and other offences in Singapore, it has been conducting a thorough review of various transactions as well as fund flows through our banking system”.

1MDB referred Reuters to its earlier statements. In May, it said it had not been contacted by any foreign lawful authority on matters relating to the company and that it would co-operate fully with the authorities.

The latest probes follow the authority's decision in late May to close down the operations of Swiss private bank BSI in Singapore for serious breaches of antimoney laundering rules, the first time in 32 years it has taken such action against a bank.

The authority did not specifically say this related to 1MDB-related transactions, though the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority said at the time that BSI had committed serious breaches of money laundering regulations through business relationships and transactions linked to the corruption scandal surrounding 1MDB.

Ahad, 17 Julai 2016

Today marks day 523 of Anwar Ibrahim's imprisonment as a political prisoner.

Newest addition Anwar's family

On the 4th of June, Nurul Nuha, Anwar's second daughter gave birth to a healthy baby boy. Although it gave great joy to hear the news of his 8th grandchild, this would be the second time being blessed a grandchild since being separated from his family more than a year ago.

National Security Council bill

On the 7th of June the controversial National Security Council (NSC) bill was gazetted as legislation. The bill was initially passed last December but needed Royal Assent by the King before it becomes law. However in a surprising move the King requested amendments to the law that provides sweeping power to the Prime Minister and members of the security council to declare "Security Zones" which would accord authorities wide powers of arrest, search and seizure without a warrant[1]. This has caused serious concerns among opposition leaders and human rights activist given the track record on human rights violations by the government. The bill automatically becomes gazetted even without Royal Assent after 30 days of presenting it to the King[2].

Anwar continues to be hospitalized

On the 15th of June Anwar was again transferred to the General Hospital of Kuala Lumpur for health checkup on his irregular blood pressure and recurring back and shoulder pain. He was admitted for 5 days where he underwent medical testing and treatment. Following the transfer, Nurul Izzah, daughter of Anwar issued a statement lamenting the inadequate medical care on Anwar. Nurul Izzah questioned "..if the number of treatments given failed to improve his health, can they be considered adequate?“[3].

She renewed calls for Anwar to be allowed to travel overseas for medical intervention and treatment, especially on the shoulder surgery that Anwar requires to alleviate the pain on his shoulder.

Lead prosecutor against Anwar appointed as human rights ambassador

Well known lawyer of the ruling party UMNO Shafee Abdullah[4]who contreversially lead the prosecution team against Anwar at the Court of Appeal and Federal Court level was appointed by the Foreign Ministry as Malaysia's ambassador at large for Human Rights[5].

The announcement was met by criticism over the obvious attempt by the government to mislead especially the international community over their commitment to human rights. Human rights group Suara Rakyat Malaysia (SUARAM) Executive Director Sevan Doraisamy in the statement said "..(it) makes it clear that the government has little to no interest in fulfilling its obligations to defend human rights"[6].

Shafee Abdullah is the same lawyer that was recorded in court to be in the house of the Prime Minister Najib Razak while Saiful Bukhari, the accuser in Anwar's case, was meeting Najib Razak to seek for "scholarship" just days before allegation against Anwar was raised[7]. Anwar’s defense team has used this as a foundation that a political conspiracy exists.

This clear conflict raised many doubts regarding the integrity of the proceeding as Shafee Abdullah was later appointed special prosecuter to lead the case despite having many capable senior prosecuters at the Attorney General's Chambers office.

500 days of prison

On the 23rd of June another sad milestone was passed as it marks 500 days of imprisonment for Anwar. Friends and family gathered at the residence of Anwar for an event to commemorate the milestone, breaking Ramadan fast together followed by Ramadan night prayers.

That’s all for June’s update. I end this email with a short message from Anwar wishing all his fellow friends and supporters Eid Mubarak. Thank you for your support and as always do keep in touch.